All Ideas Are Important Ideas

Are you looking for a new way to generate ideas to solve your problems? Do you have a culture in place that accepts that all ideas are important ideas? Do you think of yourself as a creative person? What about your team?

David Kelley, CEO of legendary design firm IDEO, spoke about the importance of building creative confidence. He relayed a classmate’s experience early on in elementary school, being ridiculed by a peer about the project he was trying to create. As a result, his classmate immediately shut down and quit the project, feeling discouraged about his peer’s opinion. Kelley went on to talk about how we can often “opt-out” of being creative due to this kind of experience – we tell ourselves that we’re not creative, so, therefore, it’s somehow true. He stressed how wrong this is and how important it is for us to understand and realize that we are all naturally creative – we’re not divided into “creatives” and “non-creatives.”

In creative workshops with accounting professionals, I always stress the need to think about more than just facts. Accountants are very facts-oriented people. The challenge is to get them to see more to their profession than just the facts and figures. Many of them feel just as Kelley described, that they somehow aren’t cut out to be creative or that they aren’t capable.

However, the important thing for all of us in technical professions and a few other professions that are generally considered “not creative” is to realize that – indeed, we are creative! Creativity is, simply put, your ability to generate ideas.  And we all certainly do that, and the more, the better!  So, remember, your involvement in the creative process is just as real and just as important as anyone else’s.

IMPROV BEYOND THE STAGE

Business schools across America have taken note of the importance of idea generation and creative thinking in the business world. For the past several years, programs have started offering courses that help students not only learn ways to promote freer thinking and brainstorming, but to adopt principles of improvisation in order to facilitate this creativity. One of the most powerful principles of improv is found in the practice of the “yes, and…” approach.

Bob Kulhan, an influential promoter of getting improvisation into business schools across America, summed up the idea of “yes, and…” in a Slate article, “When they’re collaborating onstage, improv performers never reject one another’s ideas—they say “yes, and” to accept and build upon each new contribution.” “It’s a total philosophy of creativity,” says Holly Mandel, founder of the performance school Improvolution and its corporate-targeted offshoot Imergence. “Yes, and” creates; while ‘no’ stops the flow.

It’s this “yes, and…” principle of improv that gets ideas churning up and out of people’s heads. This is not only applicable for others, but for ourselves as well. We are often our own harshest critic – a critic that is quick to dismiss our ideas as ‘stupid’.  We need to silence that critic in order for creativity to surface! In reality, there are no stupid ideas – every one of them leads somewhere, and it’s especially important in brainstorming to let all ideas rise. In creativity workshops, I stress the importance that no idea is a bad idea.  All ideas lead to a better idea. Therefore, ALL ideas are important. So, whatever is in your head, let it out!  Even if the inner critic is shouting at you – shout it down and let the idea out! Ideas (good or bad) lead to better ideas. No ideas lead to nothing.

GETTING THOSE IDEAS OUT

Remember, when we are brainstorming ideas, we are looking for quantity not quality. You can’t create and criticize in the same space.  Successful ideation requires divergent thinking, which is a process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. Once we have completed the generation of ideas, we then change to convergent thinking. Convergent thinking is where we take those ideas and organize them and take steps to see if we can arrive at the correct solution. In other words, you can now become the critic! 

There are many exercises that you can employ in your brainstorming process. One of my favorites is outrageous opposites.  If you have a problem to solve, step one is to brainstorm traditional approaches in solving the problem.  Step 2 is to brainstorm outrageous ideas in solving the problem.  When you are finished, look at the outrageous ideas and see if there is anything you can expand on.  For example:

Number of participants: 1 – 20

Problem: Recruiting seasoned staff for our company

Traditional approaches: Monster.com adds, Indeed.com ads, hire a headhunter, offer a referral bonus to current staff, etc…

Outrageous approaches: hire a blimp to fly over sporting event, place ads in restrooms, have an open house, create a fun YouTube video about your company, etc…

Review your outrageous approaches and see which ones might actually work for your organization.  There is a regional accounting firm, Withum Smith + Brown, that did fun YouTube videos to help increase the moral in the company.  These were actually so good that seasoned staffed from other accounting firms applied for positions with their firm.  Here is a link to one of those videos https://youtu.be/ZCs7O6cJgiQ.

Another favorite brainstorming exercise is called “Kill the business.” Instead of thinking of ways to grow your business, this is an exercise that focuses on ways to put your company out of business.  Your team is looking at the company’s weaknesses and listing them as a small, medium, or large threat.  Once these weaknesses have been identified and categorized, then answer a couple of questions: 

What did we not think about before that we can see now? 

What could attack us now and how can we quickly eliminate the threat?

Which one is the most important weaknesses that we must fix? 

This is an eye-opening exercise that will uncover opportunities that you may not have discovered using conventional thinking.  

There are a number of resources where you can find brainstorming exercises.  Here are a couple:

  • SmartStorming: The Game-Changing Process for Generating Bigger, Better Ideas. By Keith Harmeyer and Mitchell Rigie. 
  • Improvisation for the Theater, Third Edition, Viola Spolin (these exercises can be debriefed from a business perspective).

IMPLEMENTING A CREATIVE WORKPLACE

In the end, the workplace needs leaders that inspire and encourage the expression of creativity. John Dragoon, CMO of Novell was quoted in Forbes saying, “Truly creative leaders invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are openminded and inventive in expanding their management and communication styles, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.”

This doesn’t happen overnight, but if the leadership encourages the generation of ideas, some of them are bound to produce impressive results. Not all the ideas are going to work, no matter how much product testing and field work a company conducts. Some ideas will go nowhere, but if you have no ideas, you certainly will go nowhere.

When it comes to creativity and generating ideas, all are needed, and all are wanted. While what comes out might be a bit rough, with a little polishing and fine tuning, the result can be quite extraordinary.

If you would like to discuss having me facilitate a brainstorming session for your organization, contact me at peter@petermargaritis.com and in the subject line put “ALL IDEAS ARE IMPORTANT IDEAS.”

Humor + Workplace = Strong Team

Work is, well work…for most of us it is not all fun and games. Even people who do “fun”for a living have stress, anxiety and conflict at work. Can you imagine how stressful it is to do a standup comedy routine or be a party clown? Makes accounting look like child’s play!

I don’t advocate taking the “work” out of your office (you would most probably go out of business) but rather finding ways to put some fun into every day. How you and your team define fun is the first step. Here are a few suggestions that may help:

•  Create an atmosphere where camaraderie can flourish. Genuine kindness and friendliness most often set the tone for a more relaxed office attitude. Friends joke around with each other, work colleagues…not so much.

•  Encourage everyone to share funny things: cartoons, antidotes, silly things clients or kids have said. One CEO I know starts every meeting with a funny story. His staff feels absolutely free to cheer or jeer, and even pass on stories for him to share. All tasteful and G rated, he never wants to alienate anyone with possibly offensive material.

•  Silliness can be appropriate. Sometimes you just gotta be goofy!

Some of the funniest people I know in accounting (that is NOT an oxymoron) are also some of the savviest managers I know. They all understand that creating great teams means fostering trust, respect, support, communication –some of the same skills comedians use!

One of my workshops, Building Stronger Teams by Using Improvisational Comedy, is all about creating strong teams through humor and improvisation. It isn’t rock science but it does take commitment and a bit of work. And a commitment to letting personality and humor into your office.

My friend and colleague, Judy Carter, wrote about the 5 Steps to Bring Humor Back to the Workplace. She shares comedy tips that can help every office or work setting. Check out her article for more ideas. Judy is a great source of inspiration and has been a great coach in helping me develop my business –thanks, Judy!

Busy Season Stress Buster: Laughter!

images-1They say laughter is the best medicine. Not sure who “they” are, but I do know why this is true. When you can see things in a humorous way you will be able to lighten up, have fun, release the endolphins* – those crazy fish that swim through your blood stream and help you deal with stress, anxiety, and depression.  Your day will be brighter and you’ll have a positive impact on those around you.

Researchers have studied the effects that laughter has on the body and have turned up some interesting information on how it affects us.  One thing is that laughter helps to increase our blood flow because the blood vessels expand and contract easily there by sending the appropriate amount of blood to our brains and organs.  Those who are under stress, their blood vessels tense up thereby restricting blood flow to the brain which creates costly mistakes and errors.

Researchers have also found that laughter helps to boost our levels of immune cells where stress does just the opposite.  We get sicker quicker, come to work sick because of our workload, get others in our office sick because of their low levels of immune cells, and the next thing you know – productivity is in the Kleenex box.

Researchers have also found that laughter helps in the fight against diabetes.  Laughter helps in reducing the blood sugar in your body, and I should know because I am a diabetic.

Studies have found that children laugh over a 100 times a day but when they matriculate into the workforce that laughter rate drops to about 5 times a day. Not surprisingly, once we retire laughter rates increase.

Laughter also helps to boost office morale. So when was the last time people in your office were laughing…and it wasn’t at your expense?  Why aren’t we laughing at work when we see that laughter has a lot of health benefits?

For many of us, this busy season can bring stressful situations at home and at work. Find the humor in situations, be silly, share a harmless joke. Let the endolphins swim around.

*Full disclosure: I know that it is the endorphins, but I really prefer thinking of the endolphins. It makes me smile, and that’s a good thing! Oh, and I know that dolphins are mammals not fish but they are great swimmers. Besides, it’s my story and I’m sticking with it!